Mathew
Brady is considered the "Father of
Photojournalism," for his work in
photographing the American Civil War in
the 1860s. His parents were immigrants
from Ireland, and Mathew was born in
Warren County in New York
State.

Mathew
Brady studied under Samuel Morse
beginning in 1839. Also that year, he
met Louis Daguerre, the inventor of the
early photograph, the Daguerreotype.
Brady took his newfound knowledge in
photographic science back to the United
States and opened his own
gallery.

In
1850, Brady published a collection of
photographs featuring the most famous
Americans of his time, called "A
Gallery of Illustrious Americans."
Among the important Americans posing
for Brady's portraits was an Illinois
politician named Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln later used Brady's portrait of
him in his presidential campaign. He
met Juliette Handy at his photography
studio, and they married in 1851. When
she died in 1887, he became depressed
and alcoholic.

By the
time of the secession crisis and the
beginning of the Civil War, Mathew
Brady was already quite famous as the
leading photographer of his day.
Determined to record the history of the
war in photographs, Brady organized a
team of professional photographers to
follow the Union army as it fought. The
collection of photos from this
enterprise, titled "The Photographic
History of the Civil War," is
considered an important and stunning
record of the war, capturing not only
the glory of the war, but also the
horrible cost of combat.

While
considered today as a valuable book, at
the time, his profits from its sale did
not make up for his cost in outfitting
his staff of photojournalists, which
cost at least $100,000 (a very large
amount of money in the 1860s). In
addition, a post-war economic
depression cost him many of his other
investments, and, by the time he died
in 1896, he was a poor man, suffering
from alcoholism and loneliness. Most of
Brady's photographs now reside in the
public domain (meaning they belong to
the public, and are not the private
property of any one person or
business), because Congress bought his
collection for $2,840 in
1875.

There
are many opportunities in our world
today for photographers, perhaps check
out a Photography
School
and you can begin your own professional
collection just like Mathew
Brady.

Role
in the war years: Mathew Brady
recorded the Civil War in an impressive
collection of photographs. Many of the
images used in most books and websites on
the American Civil War are from Brady's
collection. Also, at the time of the war,
his photos enabled civilians on the
homefront to see what the war really
looked like.